1. Field of the Invention
Systems and methods consistent with the principles of the invention relate generally to network communication protocols, and more particularly, to a resource reservation protocol facilitated by a network device in a network.
2. Description of Related Art
In certain network-based applications, it may be desirable to achieve a specified Quality of Service (QoS), that is, a guaranteed network bandwidth and availability for such applications. To obtain this specified QoS, end-point devices (i.e., users of the application) may interact with network devices (e.g., routers, gateways, etc.) to reserve sufficient resources to guarantee that the application will have the specified QoS. Such end-point devices may be “originating” devices that originate communication or “terminating” devices with whom communication is sought.
Some network-based applications may need to perform “symmetric” resource reservation for the applications to function properly. In such applications, both the originating and terminating end-point devices may reserve resources from network devices to ensure a sufficient end-to-end QoS. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is one example of an application for which end-point devices need to symmetrically reserve resources (e.g., bandwidth), for example, from routing network devices. The end-point devices may coordinate this resource reservation using a Resource reSerVation Protocol (RSVP), for example the RSVP specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
Around the time of this symmetric resource reservation by the end-point devices, the associated network devices may be authorized to use, for example, the network between the network devices. Such authorization may use PacketCable™-defined constructs called “gates” (and gate-related messages) to control or “authorize” access by the network devices (and end-point devices) to the network on a per-flow basis. Such an arrangement, however, may result in a network device on one end (e.g., the terminating end of the communication) allocating resources to its end-point device without making sure that the network device on the other end (i.e., the originating end of the communication) is authorized.
Therefore, there exists a need to better coordinate the reservation of resources in a network.